


Splash of Color

by Stratagem



Series: Chaos Kids [1]
Category: Critical Role (Web Series)
Genre: Extended Family, F/M, Family Fluff, Gen, chaos crew 2.0, maybe one day!, or it should be, painting is a family event
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-10
Updated: 2019-09-10
Packaged: 2020-10-13 19:29:22
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,369
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20587850
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Stratagem/pseuds/Stratagem
Summary: The Xhorhaus needed a paint job, anyways.Or the one in which Jester and Caleb's kids are just as chaotic as their parents.





	Splash of Color

**Author's Note:**

> Hi! I love both Fjorester and Widojest equally, but the Widojest kids won today. So here are the Chaos Kids. Three of them! While they all have a Tiefling-Human-Genasi heritage, Leo is a Tiefling, Bet’s a human, and Theia is a teeny tiny Water Genasi that has wavy ocean hair instead of drippy skin.

“There’s being in trouble, and then there’s _this_.”

“It’s not trouble, it’s pretty.”

Leo looked around at unexpectedly bright walls of the Xhorhaus through the gaps between his fingers as he covered his face with both hands. Judging by the splashes of paint all over his baby sister’s clothes and hair, he had instantly and correctly judged that it was all her fault. Theia looked up at him with innocent light blue eyes.

The instant he had stepped into the entryway, which was now a gaudy yellow that was going to drive Aunt Beau crazy and please Aunt Veth, he had almost regretted ever leaving to hang out with his friends. Almost. It had been the perfect opportunity, what with both his parents out on official magic business and every other adult figure away for the day or week or month. And they had all had a great time dying the fountain in Corvin's Square glowing green, but if this was the price he had to pay for his fun...

All of the paint only reached a few feet up the wall, as far as five-year-old Theia could reach.

“You were supposed to be babysitting!” he accused, dragging his hands down his face and throwing a scorching glare at the back of the couch. One of Bet’s legs was draped over the back of it, her socked toes bouncing.

“Uh, no, you were,” she replied, not bothering to sit up and properly fight him.

“I think you’re old enough to have some responsibilities around here,” Leo snapped, “You’re ten. I said you could babysit.” Oh man, was the baseboard orange now? How far did that go? Why was it speckled with pink? He bent down and touched a finger to the paint. He came away with an orangey-pink fingertip that he didn’t know what do to with.

Theia grabbed his hand and, before he could react, she pressed his finger into the green paint on the wall, leaving a smudgy print behind. Great…

“Leo, you are in charge this time,” Bet said, her voice an almost perfect mimic of their father’s as it drifted over the couch. “Take good care of your sisters, ja? Do not fight, do not break the Xhorhaus. And your perfect sister who we love sooo much, far more than you, she is eleven, since she is just one year younger than you. You idiot.”

“Papa didn’t say that,” Theia said, “He didn’t call Leo an idiot.”

“I could swear he did. Yeah. He did. Must’ve been under his breath.”

“Is that—there’s paint on your eyelid, Theia,” Leo lamented.

Bet snorted. “She’s ninety percent paint right now.”

“Maybe if we just put her in the hot tub…it’d soak the paint out and we could fix this while she’s in there.”

Bet’s leg disappeared from the back of the couch. “We’re not supposed to use the hot tub without an adult at home.”

“Like that’s ever stopped you from swimming in it,” Leo said. He took a knee and examined the disaster that was Theia. It was hard to actually find paintless patches on her hands, arms, and face, and most of her blue freckles were covered up by paint. The comfy warm winter dress she was wearing was probably a lost cause or at least permanently stained in a rainbow of colors. Her wavy dark red hair, the same color as their grandmother’s, was partially caught back in a few braids, but it was also flecked with paint as well as stray wide streak of purple.

“I’m just saying, multiple people in this family have a bad track record with water,” Bet said.

Leo made a face. “Can we not right now?”

“What's wrong with water?” Theia asked.

“Nope, we’re not diving into dark family secrets today,” he said.

Bet laughed. “Was that an intentional pun? Or are you freaking out that much.”

Leo took a deep breath. “Would it kill you to be helpful for one second? Just one second.”

“Sure. Here’s some good news,” Bet said. She had finally decided to sit up and flop over the back of the couch. Her wild curly chestnut hair was partially in her face, and she blew out an ineffective harsh breath in an attempt to get it to move. “Mom won’t care as much as Papa.”

“Won’t they like it?” Theia asked. She tilted away from Leo as he rubbed at a blotch of lime green on her cheek. “Stop, that scratches.”

“You’re allowed to paint on the walls in your room and the Circle Room, not anywhere else,” Leo said. “Which you already knew. Why’d you decide to paint in here?”

Bet smirked. “It’s also in the kitchen and the dining room and maybe the…hold on, did you get to the training room yet, Theia?”

“A little, but I didn’t know if it should be purple or brown, so I made it both some,” she replied.

“So that’s it,” Bet said.

“And the stairs! I made the stairs very pink,” she said.

“How…how did…you’re…what…”

“She had a mission,” Bet said, “A Widogast on a mission is always scary.”

“Why the hell didn’t you stop her, Bet?” Leo demanded. He stood up and ran his hand through his hair, not even noticing that he was putting a dash of orange/pink/green through his blue-black hair. A dab wound up on his curled left horn.

“I was reading the good part,” she said, lifting a hefty book into the air with ease, “Did you know that there are spiders that tear off their back legs and throw them and then the legs explode? They’re called powderkeg skitters. They’re on this island—”

“Unless that island is the Island of Expeditious Cleaning, I don’t care,” Leo said. He stood up and closed his eyes for a moment, rapidly thinking. His spade-ended tail lashed about, nearly knocking over a lamp and a small cat statue. A second later, he opened his eyes into slits, not wanting to lose sight of his sisters.

“Do you like it, Bet?” Theia asked, walking over to the couch on her tiptoes, obviously proud of her work even if Leo wasn’t. She smiled up at her older sister, tilting her head to the side. “I used a lot of favorite colors.”

“Basically all of them,” Bet said, “I…” Normally Bet was brutally honest when it came to her opinions, but everyone had a soft spot for Theia. It was hard to be mean to her, especially since she was so tender-hearted. “It’s got a lot of heart behind it.”

Theia grinned and spun in a pleased circle, the tail ends of the ribbons in her hair dancing through the air.

“Someone broke in!” Leo said, snapping his fingers, “Yes, that’s it. There’s been a gang of pranksters lately just breaking into people’s house and painting things low down on the walls, and we were all upstairs reading, yeah, so we couldn’t hear any of them! You know, I’ve definitely heard things about these people, they’re out there. Painting things. It’s a thing.”

Bet blinked at him, slow and purposeful. She looked down at Theia, who frowned, before she looked back at Leo. Her dark blue eyes were incredulous. “You’re going to try to spin that to our parents. _Our_ parents. Think before you commit to the wrong answer.”

Leo ran his hand over his face again, smearing more paint. This time he did notice it, and he let out a stream of curses that made Bet grin. “Prestidigitation! I can use it to clean everything. It’ll only take me…a few hours…or a couple days.”

Bet sunk back down behind the couch again, completely uninterested in magic, as usual. Leo turned to find Theia and force a brush into her hand, but he had to pause as she looked up at him with those big blue eyes.

She rubbed her foot against the ground and glanced at the wall. “It’s bad?”

“That’s not—I like it, _kaninchen_, it's very pretty, it’s just a lot, you know?” He crossed his arms, trying to stay firm in the face of her sad kitten expression. “You must’ve been painting very fast.”

“I worked real hard,” she mumbled, looking down at her toes. They were painted, too. She seriously had completely covered herself in paint. Theia always had paint or chalk or gold dust on her, but this was excessive.

“Uh-huh…”

"I can help clean." Her shoulders slumped, and her drifting hair drooped.

Leo hung his head and then squinted at the wall closest to them. The purple and teal really wasn’t a bad combination even if it clashed against the Xhorhaus’ blue walls. “Do you have any silver?”

Theia beamed, hugged his side, and raced for her bottomless magical paint set that allowed her to use any color she could think of.

“I’m not involved,” Bet announced from the couch.

* * *

And that was almost exactly the same thing she said the moment the Xhorhaus’ front door opened a few hours later, the chimes sounding a welcome that was drowned out by her shouts. “I wasn’t involved! I am innocent!”

“Ah…That is a very reassuring declaration to come home to. Perhaps we just close the door and face this later, _ja_?”

“Nah, we brought dinner all this way, and we’ve got to feed them, you know?”

“Should I ask why the foyer is yellow?” their dad asked as he stepped into the living room, batting snow off the shoulders of his coat. He froze and stared at the now very bright and extremely decorated living room walls. “Oh. _Oh._ That is a lot of paint.”

Jester put her hand on his arm as she stepped in beside him, her mouth falling open for a moment at the sheer amount of artwork that was on the walls. “Huh.” She sounded far more impressed than dismayed.

“It’s a mas’erpiece!” Theia stated. She had been painting little circles of green on a doorway, but when her parents came in, she abandoned her brush and raced over to them. She collided with Jester’s legs, her smile hopeful. Her hair whipped from side to side, betraying her excitement, as she looked from her mother to her father. “It’s good?”

“Very good!” Jester said, grinning. She reached down and picked up her youngest, settling her on her hip. “Look at those color choices! What a palette! Right, Caleb?” She very gently bumped her hip into her husband’s, careful not to send him flying across the room.

He nodded slowly. “It is very intricate, but _kaninchen_, what happened to our painting rule?”

Theia pulled her lips in her mouth and made a muffled sound.

“We thought the whole house could use some new paint,” Leo said. He had helped Theia for a while before settling down in front of the fireplace, surrounding himself with music manuscript paper, quills, and ink.

“The whole house?” Caleb asked, glancing at his eldest.

Leo tilted his hand back and forth in the air. “Eh, two-thirds? I’m not too sure but probably that much.”

Caleb reached up and covered his mouth with his hand, taking in the extravagant, colorful mess. “And you believed it was a good idea to let it happen.”

Leo scratched the back of his neck. “Er…”

“Yeah, he just stood there and watched her,” Bet said flippantly, "The whole time." Leo blinked, surprised she was actually covering for him leaving the house, even it did mean she was also sort of incriminating him in the art disaster.

“There are plenty of worse things they could’ve done, Caleb,” Jester said, “It _is_ very pretty. We could leave it forever!”

“How about a few days instead?” Caleb said. When Theia’s lower lip trembled, he reached out and booped her nose with a forefinger. “You knew the rule. But I have an idea. We, all of us, make a choice about what new colors we want to paint the house and then, in a week or so, everyone comes and paints.”

“Everyone?” Bet suddenly shot up from behind the couch. “Is Aunt Beau coming? Aunt Yasha? What about Uncle Fjord?”

“I am sure we will ask—”

“Gods, YES!” Bet pumped a fist in the air. “It’s been forever! Are they coming next week? Do you know if Aunt Beau got my last letter?”

Leo looked up from his papers again, twirling a quill between his fingers. “Mom, are you going to use Sending to talk to Luc? Ask him if his group’s made it to Issylra yet!”

“But what about my paintings?” Theia said, looking down.

“Nope, that is the cutest little pouty face, but we have to keep rules because your papa said so,” Jester said. “He’s super boring like that.”

“Jester, that is not fair…”

“What? I think they’re nice! Look at them, they’re super artistic and shit. Theia’s a little artsy genius.”

Caleb bit down on a smile and shook his head. “Yes, but rules are necessary. We have talked about this, _süsse_. Freedom is very good, they need it, but some structure is very important as well.”

“Because if we don’t provide structure, we are raising, like, little chaos fiends, yeah, yeah, I know.” Jester rolled her eyes and set Theia back down on the floor before reaching out and brushing a stray lock of burgundy hair back from the five-year-old’s face. Immediately it drifted up and away from where Jester had tried to tuck it. “But they are the most adorable gremlins!”

“Did you mention food?” Leo asked, feeling like maybe he had gotten away with the whole thing. But when his dad’s piercing blue eyes landed on him, he realized that maybe he wasn’t as sneaky as he had hoped. “I’m starving…?”

“No one said anything about Aunt Beau’s letter,” Bet complained.

“How about we eat and then I’ll cast Sending, okay?”

“And we will talk this evening,” Caleb said, smiling at Leo in a way that let Leo know that it was going to just be the best talk ever and so much fun and maybe he should go ahead and melt into the carpet now and save himself from the upcoming lecture.


End file.
